TV Recap: “High Potential” – Morgan Detangles a Complicated Web Surrounding the Death of an Exotic Pet Vet

Morgan Gillory’s uncanny intelligence makes her an incredible asset to the LAPD in ABC’s High Potential. This week, she’s put to the test in a number of ways, being presented with several obscure facts that will help solve the case of a deceased vet. Here is a recap of the fifth episode of the hit new mystery series.

Episode 5: “Croaked” – Written by Diane Ruggiero-Wright

At an exotic vet clinic, a vet tech (Chase Yi) is disgruntled to work the night shift taking care of reptiles. One of them gets loose while administering medicine, and in his quest to get it back in its cage, the tech discovers his boss, Dr. Monica Davis (Rosslyn Luke), dead in her office. She’s surrounded by papers from her printer, all of which say “Murder.”

Morgan Gillory (Kaitlin Olson) makes breakfast, improvising a burrito for her son Elliot (Matthew Lamb) without all the ingredients. She sees her daughter Ava (Amirah J) drinking some orange juice from the fridge, seemingly taking a pill, which Ava denies. Morgan’s ex, Ludo Radovic (Taran Killam), arrives to watch the kids while she goes to work.

Morgan arrives at the vet clinic to meet with Adam Karadec (Daniel Sunjata). Morgan notices that Dr. Davis’ body has blotches on her hands. Despite pages around her claiming her death was murder, Oz (Dennis Akdeniz) says the cause of death appears to have been cardiac arrest. Morgan pokes around, seeing a case that should contain two poison dart frogs, but it only occupies one. She remembers a documentary about them and how simply touching them can be deadly. She sees Karadec at the sink, about to wash his hands. She tells him to stop, but he doesn’t. Thinking fast, she grabs a dart gun off the wall and shoots it at Karadec’s neck. He collapses.

Oz helps Karadec revive as Morgan reveals why she had to stop him from washing his hands. She pulls the soap dispenser off the wall and opens it to find the missing frog inside. She believes Monica rashed her hands, realized they were paralyzed, and used the printer’s voice activation feature to print her final message. Lituetenant Selena Soto (Judy Reyes) calls to say that a friend of Monica’s reported her missing last night, asking Morgan and KAradec to visit her salon.

With Karadec’s senses still impaired from the reptile dart, Morgan drives and intercepts a missed call from a woman named Aubrey whose profile in Karadec’s phone revealed that he met her through Bumble. She set up a date for him on Saturday at 1:00. They arrive at the salon where Monica’s friend works, Bethany’s Honeycomb. Not only is the salon bee-themed, but the planter out front is covered in flowers to attract the buzzing bugs.

Bethany Reed (Kathleen Munroe) tells Morgan and Karadec that she reported Monica as missing last night when her friend didn’t show up to her son’s soccer game. She says Monica never misses his matches. Asked about their history, Bethany says she and Monica met two years ago in a yoga class and quickly bonded. She last saw Monica at breakfast yesterday morning, and she described her friend as seeming distracted and nervous. Monica mentioned she was having guy troubles, but Bethany wasn’t aware that she was dating.

Bethany’s husband, Nathan (Lucas Kavner), and son, Gavin (Cary Christopher), enter the salon. Gavin runs to his mom, distraught about Monica. “Do you think that man hurt her?” he asks. He last saw Monica a few days ago at the clinic when he and his mom brought lunch for Monica. Gavin says a man stopped by while his mom was out getting coffee, and he and Monica had a fight.

Gavin is brought to the LAPD to help Daphne (Javicia Leslie) create a profile sketch of the man who had a fight with Monica. Oz bonds with the boy over their shared love of Marvel superheroes, using characters like Tony Stark and Thor to help build the profile.

Monica’s parents, Mr. (Ben Bodé) and Mrs. Davis (Kerry O’Malley), are brought in for questioning. Despite living eight miles apart, they hadn’t seen their daughter in years. Daphne enters with a sketch of the man Gavin saw Monica fight with, and Monica’s parents recognize him as their daughter’s ex-boyfriend. He was 21 when he started dating Monica, who was only 16 then. He was arrested for robbing a convenience store, and Soto learns that he was released last month. Mr. Davis tells them details about the arrest, including that the boyfriend was wearing flip flops, something that wasn’t in the police report.

Shane Seeger (Adam Hagenbuch) is brought in for questioning. He’s cold and aloof, seeming unsurprised and ungrieved that Monica is dead. He says they broke up 12 years ago, and doesn’t remember what their recent fight was about. He doesn’t have an alibi for where he was last night, but he wears an ankle monitor as a term of his arrest. Daphne searches the record and proves he wasn’t at the clinic last night. Shane works at a Venice Beach gym.

During her lunch break, Morgan goes home to snoop in Ava’s room. Ludo tries to stop her, arguing that breaking Ava’s trust will be irreversible, but Morgan can’t stop herself. She finds a pack of birth control pills hidden in one of Ava’s pillows. As she and Ludo discuss what to do, Ava stops home from school. They lie, pretending they were in her room to see if it would accommodate a swinging chair.

Daphne discovered that Monica’s clinic had great online reviews until six months ago when someone with the username Asmodius began leaving threatening reviews. She and Oz track the user to a tattoo shop, meeting with Asmodius (Angel Rosario Jr.), who says Monica incinerated his beloved tarantula, Fernanda, because she was infectious. The vet didn’t let him say goodbye to his pet. He confesses to stalking her one night in an attempt to scare her. Daphne and Oz assume he meant the vet’s home in Brentwood, but he says no, it was an apartment in Hollywood.

Daphne and Oz head to the Hollywood apartment, surprised to find Morgan and Karadec already there (Morgan found the address on a take-out order at the clinic with Monica’s name on the order). Morgan finds a photo of Monica hugging a younger Gavin in a karate uniform wearing a yellow belt. One of the apartment’s rooms is full of exotic pets. It seems that Monica was trafficking. Among them is a tarantula – Asmodius’ pet. They also find a paper with a series of codes. Morgan is the first to crack it – real estate info. She finds a pen for a realtor.

 

Realtor Ty Williams (Anthony Pierre Christopher) comes to the LAPD to answer questions. He was helping Monica buy a home, who told him she was moving with her partner. He shows Morgan a picture of the property Monica was buying. Morgan notices the flowers in the garden, all designed to attract bees. “Monica wanted to buy a house for the woman she loved,” Morgan realizes.

Back at Bethany’s Honeycomb, Morgan and Karadec accuse Bethany as having been in a secret relationship with Monica. She comes clean, saying that her husband, Nathan, found out that she was planning to leave him and bring Gavin with her.

Nathan is brought in for questioning, with Gavin in tow in his karate uniform. Morgan keeps him occupied as he shows off his new purple belt. Karadec interrogates Nathan. Oz enters the interrogation with a book about exotic frogs that he found in Nathan’s toolbox. A page about poisonous frogs has a coffee stain on it. “Alright, I did it,” Nathan confesses.

Oz wants to celebrate with a drink, but Daphne is the only one who takes him up on the offer. Morgan doesn’t feel like the case is properly closed, but Karadec says that with a confession, they can wait until after the weekend to look further into the case. On their way out, Morgan realizes that Gavin is now a purple belt, but in the photo at Monica’s apartment, he had a yellow belt. It would’ve taken him longer than 2 years to make that much progress, so Bethany’s timeline doesn’t feel right.

Over the weekend, Morgan visits the convenience store that Shane Seeger robbed. She visualizes the events that led to his arrest. She then takes the kids to Venice Beach, finding Shane training at the outdoor gym. She asks why he didn’t tell the police that Monica was his accomplice in the robbery, something she figured out while at the convenience store. He has an earbud in, and as Morgan reaches to pull it out, she notices a small, unique detail about Shane’s ears. She asks if Monica was pregnant. He confirms that she was.

Morgan and her kids crash Karadec’s date with Aubrey (Maria Pallas) to run her theory by him. She thinks Monica’s distance from her parents happened when they made her give up her baby for adoption. Later, Monica found the adopting couple, Bethan and Nathan, and got into their lives to be close to her son. She knew Shane was Gavin’s biological father when she saw that he has ear dimples on both ears, a rare trait that Gavin also has. Morgan believes that Monica was using Bethany to get her son back.

Bethany and Gavin are called to the LAPD. Oz keeps Gavin entertained while Bethany is questioned. “I destroyed my marriage for Monica, and it was all a lie,” she comes clean. Bethany was at the clinic when Shane stopped by to talk to Monica. He was angry to find out that she gave their son up for adoption, and Bethany put two and two together at that moment. She realized how much Gavin and Monica had in common, with her son even wanting to become a vet like her. Karadec sends for Nathan to be released.

Mrs. Davis stops by the office to pick up her daughter’s items. Oz gives Gavin some money for the vending machine while he helps her. Daphne comes out and tells Oz that Bethany confessed. Mrs. Davis gets emotional, not because her daughter’s killer has been caught, but because she realizes that she was just in the same room with her grandson. She goes to the hallway to help Gavin with the vending machine.

Oz apologizes to Nathan as he releases Gavin’s father. He asks why Nathan confessed to a murder he didn’t commit. Nathan says he grew up without a mother and didn’t want that for his son.

Daphne and Oz tie up a loose end, returning an exotic tarantula to his aggrieved owner at the tattoo parlor.

The next morning, Morgan surprises Ava with breakfast in bed. She comes clean about snooping in her room, asking her daughter’s forgiveness, and saying she swished Ava had told her she was on birth control. There would’ve been a small fight, but Morgan says she will always have Ava’s back. They hug. Morgan is surprised when Ava reveals the reason she got on birth control – to help with her acne.

Next Episode: “Hangover” – Airing Tuesday, 10/29, at 10/9c on ABC

A wild office party at a high-profile medical technology startup leads to the shocking murder of the founder and CEO, and Morgan and the team are on the case. Meanwhile, a new co-worker at the precinct catches Morgan’s eye.